Adams – I will have the final say

Sacha Gaydamak confirmed at the weekend what we all knew anyway, with his admission that ‘Pompey are up for sale’, but Tony Adams has again stressed that he will decide who goes and will not be forced into selling players with none going without his say so.

People have been concerned about the number of players that will leave in January, and the ‘helpful’ press reports have not helped ease these nerves, but I had decided a while back that my own thinking is we will see nowhere near the ‘exodus’ that had been forecast and Adams’ thoughts that player after player will not have to be sold is something that I believe.

We do not want to be a selling club but in all honest there are not many clubs in this country, in world football in fact, that can be overly ‘picky and choosy’ when it comes to buying and selling – offers that are too good to refuse will always be accepted, and really it has to be that way. Offers where we double or treble our outlay not only help ‘balance the books’ but also allows us a chance to bring in some players in areas we need them.

Seeing ‘one or two’ going was always something that I felt likely regardless as to who was in charge, and if the club was up for sale or not.

Lassana Diarra seems the prime candidate, so with Adams saying ‘if a ridiculous offer comes in, I’ll accept it to be honest but he has not said get rid of anyone’ I feel the Frenchman will fall into that category – and the rumours are that he has ‘already been sold to Citeh’ for a fee in the region of £18m-£23m… If true then I would again say this ‘is’ in the clubs best interests and should allow us to keep others and possibly even bring in Nadir Belhadj and Armand Traore permanently, in an ideal world a midfielder as well?

Not much has changed if you ask me – yep Harry Redknapp has gone and you can be sure that he will be ‘tapping up’ our players, but Spurs do not a bottomless pit of money do they and more and more seem to be voicing their disappointment towards him since he left – so we just sit tight and see what next month brings, it will almost certainly bring the disappointment of a ‘star name’ leaving but that was always likely to be the case and if we play our cards right we ‘should’ still come out of it in decent shape…

Peter Crouch – and others – has hinted that he ‘might’ move on, but only if others go with his words today, following last weeks thinly veiled attack on Redknapp, being: ‘I am very happy here at the minute.

‘I enjoy working with Tony Adams but you never know what the future holds.

‘It is very important we keep our best players and the players who are important to our success.’

January will probably test our nerves to the fullest, but lets not go into it fearing the worst – it gets hard to keep away from being cynical, but without relaxing too much, I would like to hope that those who manage the club are not blindsiding us and telling us porkies, well too many…